UMIDIGI One Pro Hands-On Review: Premium Design & Features at a Great Price

The technological market is extremely extensive, so today there are many companies dedicated to seize this field, one of them is the Chinese manufacturer UMIDIGI, who on several occasions has caught our attention with their Smartphones, such as UMIDIGI Z2 and Z2 Pro a high-end set, or in this case, its most recent release the UMIDIGI One Pro, a mobile that guarantees a first-class experience for a moderate investment. UMIDIGI is one of those companies that is not sure with hands in hand and instead focuses heavily on a large number of devices placed on the market. Today we talk about UMIDIGI One/One Pro, arrived a bit ‘quietly but that, being a very cheap smartphone, is perhaps one of the most interesting. In my opinion, the company produces really high-quality smartphones that have high-quality cases, excellent displays and decent SoC configurations, for adequate money, well, Here we tell you all the secrets of the UMIDIGI One Pro with our in-depth Review.

The UMIDIGI One Pro is a new mid-range model with premium features with an excellent price-performance ratio. The basis is the eight-core processor Helio P23, which has been housed in high-end smartphones. For perfect performance balance, 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of ROM storage are available. This can be expanded by up to 256 GB using a micro SD card. There is also a powerful 3D Mali G71 MP2 accelerator. UMIDIGI One Pro can play with demanding 3D applications and games. UMIDIGI One Pro will delight even the most demanding user. The equipment has not missed a number of premium features such as Face Detection, Face Detection, Fingerprint Reader, VoLTE, NFC, and even wireless charging.

We will be discussed in more detail in this review. About performance, software stuffing and price will also be told.
Before starting the review, we would like thanks to UMIDIGI for sending us the UMIDIGI One Pro for Test.

Unboxing

The UMIDIGI One Pro, comes in a box that makes us fall in love with its elegance, The main box is also made of black cardboard, there is a textured cover on the top cover, and the company’s logo is also located in the center. On the back, there is a sticker with the technical characteristics of the device.

Under the smartphone was an advertising flyer, with gratitude for the purchase, a link to the company’s social networks and an offer to participate in the contest. Below, a stylish enough black envelope, on the front surface of which flaunts the inscription “LINK TO THE WORD“, and on the back “UMIDIGI“.

In general, the delivery set is quite good. Continuous to it, has the following dimensions: 17.00 x 9.40 x 4.50 cm with a weight of 0.450 kg, also offers a series of accessories that will match this Device, which are:

1x Smartphone UMIDIGI One Pro

1x Charger

1x SIM needle

1x USB cable

1x Protective Cover

1x User manual in English

Comparison UMIDIGI One / One Pro

In addition to the Pro version of the UMIDIGI, there is still a standard version. This waives a few extra features such as wireless charging and NFC and has instead of 64GB of internal memory only 32GB. As a small consolation, the battery of the standard version is slightly larger.

Design

When it comes to acquiring a smartphone, we are looking for beauty and resistance, a combination that ensures the durability of the Device, which is why the UMIDIGI One Pro has become a sensation that has caused a furor in the users due to its attractive design. At first glance, the most striking feature of this device is its colors, since it has 3 versions where a degradation between a blue and purple color is observed, which has been called “Twilight color” as well as a black option (The “Twilight color” version is tested). As for its construction materials, they match this style, since an aluminum alloy- based housing was used, which is accompanied by a glass It extends throughout the equipment, causing an excellent touch sensation.

After opening the simple packaging of the UMIDIGI One Pro, a WOW effect will be instantaneous. It also retains a second look, although it is relatively obvious that the UMIDIGI One Pro is a kind of hybrid of iPhone X and Huawei P20 Pro. Regardless, you have UMIDIGI but let that despite the aggressive selling price of $139.39 / $169.99 a cell phone succeeded, which visually really can compete with any high-end smartphone. The smartphone has a clean processed metal frame, which includes the front and back of the glass. Although the weight of 188g is not particularly light, it also emphasizes the value of the cell phone. The smartphone measures 148.4 x 71.4 x 8.5mm and can still be operated with one hand despite the large display. Also positive, we note the USB Type-C port on the bottom next to the 3.5mm headphone port.

The examined specimen has a back cover of Twilight color, which is covered with glass on the top, made on technology 2.5D. In the upper right corner, on a small area, there is a double chamber, just below, a massive enough eye-piece of the flash. In the lower part, you can find the name of the manufacturer. In general, the back of the smartphone looks very impressive, although it looks like Apple products.

The side frames are made of chrome-plated metal. On the right side, there is a volume rocker and a fingerprint finger scanner that combines an on / off button. It is difficult to say how long this design lasts, but the fact that it is very convenient is a fact. On the left side, there is a combined tray for sim cards and a memory card.

In the upper part, there is a hole behind which the microphone of noise reduction is hidden. In the lower part is a standard 3.5 mm. (mini-jack), a microphone hole, a USB Type-C connector and a mono-speaker grill that, by the way, sounds very loud and clear. No cheap Chinese sound. The sound really has medium frequencies, which is very rare in budget smartphones.

A complete case of decent enough quality, sits on the smartphone, as it is poured, has all the necessary slots and holes.

Display

The screen of the UMIDIGI One Pro measures 5.9 inches in diagonal and is in 19: 9 format with Notch. Unfortunately, with a resolution of 1520 x 720 pixels, the compact mobile phone only reaches 287 PPI and is just below the Retina value. If you approach the eye very close, you can still perceive individual pixels. The resolution is still clear, considering that it saves battery life and computing power. The viewing angle stability and color representation are good. The brightness is also sufficient to use the display even in light sunshine outdoors. In the settings, you also have the option to activate a blue light filter for the evening hours.

The UMIDIGI One Pro has a notch to let the display occupy much of the front. In the notch are the proximity sensor, the front camera, and a notification LED accommodated. Above the notch, the distance to the frame is only 3mm. At the bottom, the chin is just a little bit wider at just 8mm than at the iPhone X. For a cheap device like the One Pro, the display-to-front ratio is nevertheless considerable. In a smartphone with Notch, one wonders, of course, to what extent the system is adapted to this “feature” and optimized. It is important that the symbols are displayed correctly and not cut off in the middle, how other apps react to them and that you can also black out the area to hide the notch to some extent.

Overall, UMIDIGI did a good job on average. Since the Notch with a width of 3,3cm is quite expansive, will find next to the network reception, Wifi, battery and time only the time place. However, Bluetooth or a pair of plugged-in headphones can no longer be displayed and only become visible when the status bar is pulled down. This hardly disturbed me during the test phase. What I found a little annoying, however, is the lack of opportunity to display the battery levels in the battery icon. Here one could definitely have a write off with other manufacturers such as OnePlus. To show the exact battery capacity, it is also necessary to pull down the status bar. However, Umidigi does a good job with the presentation of apps. Here in the display options, there is the possibility to restrict the display to the area without a notch, if an app is not adapted.

The touchscreen registers up to 10 points of contact at the same time and works precisely, making it easy to get along well with a mobile phone, even as a fast-acting pen. Another big plus is that the UMIDIGI has double-sided scratch-resistant glass.

Hardware Performance

The UMIDIGI drives an Helio P23 from MediaTek. The Octa Core consists of a power cluster with 4 x 2.3 GHz and a power-saving cluster with 4 x 1.65 GHz. As a graphics solution, the ARM Mali G71 MP2 operates at 700MHz. Also, we were able to certify in our previous test equipment, such as the Doogee S50, the Helio P23, that he calculated accordingly efficient and does not branch off much from the battery. In addition, the UMIDIGI One and One Pro still have 4GB of memory: the normal has 32GB of memory and the Pro 64GB.

With the performance, the Android smartphone can be used well: the system runs very smoothly and for basic tasks (surfing, WhatsApp, navigation, …) you will not notice the difference to a flagship. Even 3D games can be played with the Helio P23, except that sometimes you have to compromise on the graphics stage here. For occasional gamers, the performance is still sufficient, ambitious gamers should use the Redmi Note 5 in the budget area rather. In the Antutu benchmark, the smartphone scored 65,463 points, while Geekbench rates the performance of a single core in 823 and multi-core in 2637 with the active work of all processors, which is comparable to Redmi Note 5.

The RAM is large enough with 4GB of RAM for some apps in the background. As far as multitasking capability is concerned, we can give the UMIDIGI One Pro a good result. The internal memory achieves a read rate of 160MB / s and a write speed of 130MB / s. The RAM is 5GB / s fast. For a cell phone of this price range can be seen.

Operating System

The UMIDIGI One Pro runs on Android 8.1. Thankfully, the manufacturer showed insight and buried Umi OS. In this respect welcomes a clean Android system without major changes in the interface. Compared to Xiaomi’s Mi A2 / A2 Lite, there are a few additional settings that greatly enhance the user experience. For example, you can set the position of the navigation buttons, change the font or control background activities with DuraSpeed. Otherwise, there is no bloatware on the system and the virus test was negative. The Google Play store are of course available by default and also work perfectly.

Like all UMIDIGI smartphones, this too does not offer much from the software point of view. Android is version 8.1 Oreo updated with the June patches. In terms of additions, we have the ability to hide the lower key bar and the ability to activate the unlock with the face, which will not be safe but that works well up to classic lighting situation inside, less complete darkness. The software flows smoothly and without particular hitches, defending itself well in most of the situations. Too bad for notifications that, as for many other smartphones with the notch are not shown at all in the upper bar, but fortunately appear in the screen lock.

Camera

The camera on the back is composed of the main sensor with 12MP and an aperture of f / 2.0 and a second with 5 MP. The chip comes from Omnivision and is called OV12870. On the front, there is a single S5K3P3 with 16MP and an f / 2.0 large aperture from Samsung. As for image quality, the UMIDIGI One Pro surprised me positively. Of course, the phone can not compete with twice or three times as expensive flagships, for the price range around $139.39 / $169.99, the pictures are well above average.

In daylight you get shots with a good sharpness and detail, only the colors are often a bit pale. Further zooming in reveals a slight image noise, but the photos also look useful in the details. Of course, as soon as the day falls and the light goes down, the picture quality decreases quite quickly. However, you can still take usable photos here. However, one should not rely on the autofocus of the cell phone, which often tends to errors in low-light. With a bit of patience and manual focus, the images are often still useful here. The result of the rear camera can be almost 1: 1 transferred to the front camera. Again, you get in good light with good photos detail details, but sometimes seem a bit pale. Selfies succeed with the front camera in less light but not good, because a very strong image noise occurs very quickly.

Video recordings with the UMIDIGI One Pro are reasonably usable. Here is even more than photos, that good video for a lot of light is needed. However, the focus seems to have quite a problem with videos and generally reacts very slowly. Oddly enough you get with the OpenCamera app from the Playstore much better-focused videos. Incidentally, there is a button for electronic image stabilization (EIS) in the settings. This does not change the fact that in motion all videos are affected by strong jerking.

And finally, the big surprise. The UMIDIGI One Pro has a REAL dual camera. Thus, the One Pro is the first cheap smartphone of a smaller manufacturer with a real dual-cam in the annals of China’s mobile history. Congratulations! Of course, the quality of the Bokeh recordings cannot quite match those of the big players like Xiaomi and Meizu, but with a lot of patience, you get halfway usable results.

Connectivity

The UMIDIGI One Pro is a dual SIM phone. Two Nano-SIM cards can be used simultaneously in the mobile phone. Alternatively, it is possible to use one of the two SIM slots for memory expansion via MicroSD. The network reception is sufficiently strong and all 3G and 4G frequencies important in Germany are supported. In addition, there is a whole range of other LTE tapes, so that the phone should have a 4G reception in almost every country in the world:

The call quality on the phone is average and the handsfree function can also be used. Noise is filtered out well.

Dual-Band Wifi is also supported, but you have to do without the .ac standard. In practice, however, this is not a big limitation. Bluetooth is supported by the 4.2 standard, which is also typical of a mid-range phone. Otherwise, the UMIDIGI One Pro also offers a gyroscope, an e-compass, proximity, acceleration and brightness sensor and navigation with GPS and GLONASS. Positioning works amazingly well and the UMIDIGI can easily be used as a Navi replacement. In addition to the standard version, the UMIDIGI One Pro also offers NFC.

For sound output works in addition to the right speaker opening on the bottom nor the auricle. It is a bit exaggerated to speak of proper stereo sound here. The sound is still neat and overdrives even at the highest volume only a little. However, for a mid-range phone, the lows are pretty much under-represented.

Battery

The UMIDIGI One Pro has a 3250mAh battery. The capacity is slightly smaller than the standard version with 3550mAh, probably to accommodate the coil for wireless charging in the phone. The battery’s capacity is average for a 5.9-inch smartphone and the battery life is accordingly. Throughout the day I was able to achieve an on-screen time between 4 and 6 hours with the UMIDIGI One Pro and the battery lasted for 1.5 days. Although there are much more durable cell phones like the Redmi Note 5, this result is good for life.

Charged is the battery with the supplied power adapter in 90 minutes. In addition, the One Pro supports wireless charging with 15 watts. At the time of the test, we were only able to use a 10W charger with which the charging process lasted from 10 to 90% for about 2 hours and 40 minutes. With a correspondingly strong power supply, it should go a little faster.

Conclusion

The UMIDIGI One Pro is one of the best smartphones in the price range up to $140. This good result is due to the cell phone’s premium workmanship, a camera, and a clean system. In addition, the One Pro with 15W wireless charging and a USB Type C connection offers a few small things that set it apart from the competition. This UMIDIGI One Pro has therefore convinced us, almost across the board, thanks to a really good price-performance ratio. In the version, we tested it can be bought around $169.99 but the feeling that returns holding it in hand is that of a more expensive device.

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